Unsolved
This post is more than 5 years old
2 Posts
0
5003
Dell Precision T5500 second drive not recognised
I have recently purchased a Dell Precision T5500 Workstation and I am having difficulty installing a second hard drive. The original computer came with a single regular SATA hard drive on which I installed the Windows 10 64-bit operating system. Then I realized that Dell no longer supports the T5500 for Windows systems beyond Windows 7. I then installed an SSD in the first drive bay and moved the original hard disk to the second bay. A clean installation of Windows 7 64-bit was made on the SSD and all the Windows 7 drivers recommended by Dell were installed .The system operates satisfactorily but the second drive is not recognized in the BIOS or by Windows 7. I can switch the two drives (either loading Windows 7 or Windows 10) but only one data cable seems to work. If I start with only the second data cable connected I receive an error message that Drive 0 is missing.
In BIOS there are three SATA options: 1) Raid Autodetect / AHCI; 2) Raid Autodetect / ATA; 3) Raid on. The original setting was 'Raid on' and if I use either of the other settings Windows 7 will not load. But with either of the autodetect settings on, when I restart the computer the second hard drive is still not recognized in the BIOS. In BIOS, SATA-0 shows the recognized drive controlled by RAID BIOS; SATA-1 and SATA-2 are two DVD drives; SATA-3, SATA-4 and External SATA are all shown as empty. All of these ports are shown as "Controller- serial ATA".
The operation of RAID and SATA are mysteries to me but the symptoms are identical with the second data cable not being connected. The two data cables I am using - marked SATA 1 - come from the bottom of the tower, but there is another short SATA 1 cable, identical to the others, coming from the top of the mother board. To try that would require an extension cable.
Any suggestions?
frank143
14 Posts
0
February 6th, 2017 22:00
Go into BIOS "Drives" screen and ensure appropriate SATA headers are check marked so system will recognize the drives upon boot. Also, drive with the operating system has to be before 2nd drive in the "boot sequence" screen selections..
womba0
2 Posts
0
February 6th, 2017 23:00
Thanks for the response.
The problem has now been resolved. It was caused by one of the SATA sockets on the motherboard being unresponsive. By avoiding that socket and plugging the second hard drive into a different socket it is recognized.
frank143
14 Posts
0
February 7th, 2017 14:00
Glad you got it resolved. Unresponsive socket could be bad board component, or simple as a BIOS setting.
Wrongway88
2 Posts
0
August 26th, 2018 17:00
You the man! I was having problems as well and with a few tries this got me going. Much appreciated.